Esmeralda and Lady Ada returned to the drawing-room, where Barker and Lady Wyndover awaited them impatiently, and the awful mystery of robing the bride proceeded.

Esmeralda was rather paler than usual, and her heart was still beating painfully. Why had she not told Trafford of Norman Druce and his love for her?

“What on earth did Trafford want with you?” asked Lady Wyndover. “The idea of his coming round this morning! Men have not the least notion of propriety!”

Ada Lancing, with a glance at Esmeralda, answered for her.

“Norman Druce has just come back, and Lord Trafford wanted to introduce him to Esmeralda,” she said. “But she had met him before.”

Esmeralda flushed momentarily.

“Good gracious, is that all!” remarked Lady Wyndover. “He might have waited until after the ceremony, I should[166] think. But that is just like Lord Trafford. He thinks there is no one like that boy, and no doubt expects Esmeralda to be of the same opinion. Where is the lace, Barker? Turn round this way a little, dear. Why, I declare, your hand is shaking! I hope you are not upset. I wish he had not come!”

“I am all right,” said Esmeralda; and though her voice was low, it did not tremble.

Before the bride was fully attired in the white splendor which would fill half a column of the next morning’s papers, the guests were on their way to the church.

The duke and Lady Lilias and other members of the family had come up to the ducal house in Park Lane, where also was staying the bishop, who was to conduct the ceremony.

When the ducal party drove to the church, they found it almost filled with the other guests and a large number of the uninvited public, some of whom had been waiting for hours for the doors to be opened. For this was, as Lady Wyndover had said, to be the wedding of the season.

The duke, leaning on Lord Selvaine’s arm and his ebony stick, looked extremely well and happy, and the people pointed him out to each other and talked about him in awed and delighted whispers. Lord Selvaine, with his white hair and serene smile, attracted almost as much attention; but serene though it was, there was a touch of triumph in it.

This day was to see the restoration of his house, the rising of the Belfayre ph?nix, and he was happy.

The organ played softly, the long procession of clergy and choir filed into the chancel, a murmur arose, and the marquis, with Lord Ffoulkes, his best man, came up the aisle.

“How handsome he is!” whispered the women, “and how noble looking! Any one could tell he was a Belfayre by his likeness to his father; he will make a splendid duke!”

He stood at the steps of the communion rail, grave and self-possessed, waiting for his bride; and presently the music quickened slightly, and she was seen coming up the aisle leaning upon the arm of Lord Blankyre, who was to “give her way.”

The murmur rose again, and grew almost too loud for a sacred edifice, as she came in sight; and the women whispered among themselves in admiration of her beauty and the magnificence of her dress. It was a splendid procession, a vision of white loveliness accentuated by gleaming pearls and flashing diamonds, and those who had spent hours of weary waiting felt that they were receiving their reward.

[167]

Esmeralda walked up the aisle with downcast eyes, but though she could feel the universal gaze upon her, she was not frightened. Fear had no place in the heart of the pride of Three Star. And as she raised her eyes and saw the crowd, the white-robed clergy, and the tall, commanding figure waiting for her at the altar, she thought of the camp. Only a few months ago she was Esmeralda Howard, a girl of no importance, running wild in a diggers’ camp; and now— Was it all a dream?

The service commenced; it was as elaborate and ornate as a full choir, enthusiastic organist, and a famous bishop could make it, and the spectators felt almost as if they were assisting at a state ceremony.

The ring was slipped on, the hands of the pair were joined, the bishop delivered his little address, and pronounced his blessing in his well-known manner—a mixture of sacerdotal dignity and sweetness—and Esmeralda walked down the aisle the wife of the Marquis of Trafford.

There was a crowd in the vestry, for every one was anxious to inscribe his name in the registry, or at least witness the ceremony of signing.

The duke was the first witness, and when he had written his name rather shakily, he turned to the bride and kissed her, and they all saw that there were tears in his eyes.

Every one thronged round her, and she felt her hand pressed, and sometimes her lips, in a kind of whirl; but through it all she was conscious of Trafford’s nearness, and the words, “My husband,” were singing in her heart.

“I wish you a long and happy life, Lady Trafford,” said the courtly bishop, taking her hand in his soft one and smiling benignantly at her; “and, with God’s blessing, I think my wish, and the wish of many, will be fulfilled.”

There was a large crowd outside, and as the bride emerged upon her husband’s arm, it cheered vociferously, and some children from Belfayre, who had been brought to London, scattered flowers upon her path.

Esmeralda looked at the bright, rosy faces, and for the first time her eyes filled; but the tears were those of happiness, and did not fall.

The wedding-breakfast—for the old-fashioned feast was kept—was a very great success, and the guests, unusual as was the hour, did not despise the spread. Esmeralda, as she sat by her husband in the center of the side of the table, was pronounced the loveliest bride that had been seen for the last ten[168] years: which is a long time in the annals of beauty; and the men looked from her to Trafford with generous envy.

Esmeralda was rather bewildered at first by the number of the guests and the proportion of strangers, and sat for a time with her long lashes sweeping her cheek, but presently she looked around, and the first face she saw was that of Norman Druce. He was seated almost opposite her. She very nearly started. She had not seen him in the church or in the vestry, and had very nearly forgotten him.

He was not pallid or downcast, as the rejected rival is generally represented; on the contrary, his handsome face was flushed, and he was talking and laughing with what looked like an utter absence of embarrassment; but Esmeralda felt, rather than saw, that he avoided her eyes, and that he carefully looked away from her. It was a brilliant party, and there were many beautiful women present beside the bride. Lady Ada’s delicate, ethereal loveliness looked its best in her bride-maid’s dress, and Lilias seemed more petite and mignonne than ever in her virginal white and lace. Lady Wyndover was now indeed in her seventh heaven of happiness, and, a marvel of artistic make-up, looked little more than a girl as she beamed under the compliments of Lord Selvaine.

“I am continually mistaking you for the bride, Lady Wyndover,” he said; “and, really, this has been so successful a performance that I am almost tempted to arrange a repetition for my own benefit. Would you be very much shocked if I were to propose to you after they have all gone?”

“Take care,” she retorted, with a delighted laugh; “I may hold you to your words. What would you do then?”

“Live happy ever afterward, of course,” he said, with his bland smile. “This sort of thing is terribly contagious. Look at Trafford and Esmeralda. Are they not enough to make any man and woman go and do likewise?”

“Ah, yes!” she sighed, gazing at them with a touch of envy; “but they are so young.”

“I think you are not too young to follow their example,” he said, blandly.

“Get your blushes ready, Esmeralda,” said Trafford. “There are going to be some speeches, and they are an awful ordeal. Look at poor Ffoulkes! I can see his hand trembling from here. He will upset that glass if he does not take care.”

The speeches were, fortunately, not long, and everybody declared them to be most brilliant efforts, from the few words spoken by the duke, in his thin, aristocratic voice, slightly quivering with emotion, to the stammering and broken sentences[169] of the agonized Lord Ffoulkes, who was trembling with nervousness, though he had led a forlorn hope in one of our little wars without a tremor.

There was much laughter, more applause, and a delightful thrill of excitement, and then Lady Wyndover looked significantly at Esmeralda, and she and the bride-maids went to change the magnificent bridal-dress for a traveling costume.

More champagne flowed when the bride had left the room, and the laughter and talking grew louder; but Norman Druce, who had been as joyous as any one, suddenly became quiet and thoughtful. He sat for a few minutes staring vacantly at the table, and answering the remarks of the pretty girl beside him at random, until at last she said:

“I don’t believe you’re listening to a word I’m saying, Lord Druce. What is the matter? If you are really very much in love and can only think of her, whoever she may be, I will let you alone and talk to the bishop.”

Thus adjured, he roused himself, and, with the aid of champagne, which he drank as if it were water, became brilliant once more; indeed, he grew rather too noisy for the young lady who had bantered him, and she turned her attentions to the bishop after all.

Trafford’s health was drunk about fifty times, and he sat patiently smiling and waiting. He had gone through it all extremely well, and had earned the encomiums of the men, who declared that he had played the part like a hero.

“Never broke down or cried once!” said Ffoulkes, with an enthusiasm and admiration born of champagne, and the relief of having got through the speech which had haunted him for weeks past and made his life a burden. “Never saw anything like it. Give you my word that I should have fainted at the very least. Awful ceremony! Enough to keep any thinking man single for the whole of his life. I say, old chap, hadn’t we better be getting our togs together? Won’t do to keep the bride waiting, you know; bad example; though, by gad! they don’t want any example in that business, as a rule.”

Trafford went into the hall for his light overcoat.

“I had a stick somewhere,” he said. “Where did I put it? Oh, I remember, I left it in the anteroom last night.”

“I’ll get it,” said Ffoulkes. “Got to wait on you hand and foot to-day, you know.”

“You wouldn’t find it. Go back into the dining-room—but don’t have any more champagne,” said Trafford, and he laughed.

Lord Ffoulkes nodded and grinned, and Trafford went into[170] the anteroom. The stick was standing where he had left it, and he took it up and was leaving the room when Ada entered.

She closed the door, and stood looking at him, her face white, her lips tightly compressed.

“I—I have been watching,” she said, with a catch in her breath. “I knew—felt—that you would want to say ‘Good-bye.’”

Trafford looked down gravely, remorsefully; he had not thought of her. He did not know what to say, so, of c............